Member Showcase

Outline Brief

The gift card industry is saturated. Go to a major retailer and you’ll find spindles of offerings selling everything from music to fast food. This begs the question:

How do you make a gift card stand out?

Some companies have gone the novelty route by dressing up gift cards with flashing lights and puppy pictures. Others have flooded shelves with dozens of designs hoping to garner interest through quantity.

In the end, though, all gift cards serve the same purpose – they store money. That’s their only function. They can’t tell you about who is using the card, promote products, reinforce advertising or do cool things such as play movies, download MP3s and deliver software.

But DVD Gift Cards can.

Knowledge
Millions use gift cards each year, but little, if anything, is ever known about them. With opt-in incentives and usage tracking, Serious cards can deliver registration info and metrics such as location, card sessions and clicks within the Card.

Decider
Utilise in-card discounts, special offers and interactive product guides to influence purchase decisions.

Advantage
With its patent portfolio, Serious is the only company that can legally make CD and DVD Gift Cards.

Serious™ Digital Publishing is taking the U.S. gift card market by storm with a quantum leap from plastic gift cards to its interactive DVD Cardz™ Media. The industry pioneer and intellectual property owner, Serious was commissioned by Circuit City to produce their second interactive DVD gift card program together, featuring powerful Disney content from the imminent studio release; “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End”.

Outline Work

Circuit City released its second DVD Gift Card in May 2007 with a card dedicated to promoting the release of the film Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. The Card included film trailers, downloads, games and weblinks for direct purchase.

Increased Functionality
Not only do the cards store currency as standard, but they actually ‘gift’ superb interactive content that will play on DVD players, and Win/Mac drives as well as the gaming consoles, PS2, Xbox & Xbox 360. The functionality of the cards allows them to become more central to a retailer’s overall marketing strategy too, opening up two-way dialogue with consumers which can be used to gain feedback to best serve customers.

Pirates Gift Card in the news:
PROMO Magazine
Prepaid Trends
Promo and Incentives
Videos Business

The cards can also promote relevant merchandise for redemption against, and can drive purchase online via embedded hyperlinks. These developments mean that the modern gift card has been fast tracked from the role of static transactional device to an exciting interactive brand experience, offering a competitive advantage in what is increasingly a crowded market.

Product and Movie Promotion
Serious teamed with Circuit City and Disney to create the themed interactive DVD gift card that is available at all Circuit City stores and online at CircuitCity.com in correlation with the theatrical release of "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End". Combined with outstanding content from the movie, the DVD gift cards also contribute to the studio’s large scale marketing campaign by teasing its release, (each card carries the movie trailer), as well as having the potential to go on to become limited edition collector pieces in their own right.

With a play time of around 15 minutes, the DVD Gift Card is a fully-loaded experience, carrying superb movie assets (in addition to the trailer), including free Pirate downloads, (a wallpaper and fun templates for foldable models), an exclusive Pirate aptitude test, (so users can determine their rank on the ship) and weblinks to purchase related movie merchandise (e.g., Pirates of the Caribbean video games for all consoles, available in Circuit City stores).

Unique Features

The DVD gift cards look and feel like standard gift cards with a magnetic stripe on the front that swipes at the point of sale terminal. However the PET (standard PVC surface) is bonded by a special technique to the DVD part on the underside, which additionally has a protective coating on it to resist scratching. The payment card data is held on the top and the DVD side holds 180 MB of content. Only Serious can deliver interactive DVD Cards, because the seating device which allows the card to function in a DVD tray is protected by over 100 patents which the company owns.

"We're excited to team with Serious on this initiative and to be able to offer our customers such a unique and collectible product related to the release of 'Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End'," said Dawn vonBechmann, Circuit City’s vice president, multi-channel experience. "It's a perfect gift idea for people looking for something fun to give recent graduates, Dad for Father's Day or anyone else with a love for consumer electronics and the Pirates of the Caribbean movies."

Statistically, gift cards already have replaced apparel as the gift of choice amongst consumers in the States, and with 66% of American adults buying an average of 4-5 gift cards in 2006 of an average value of $38 each, (source: FirstData, Deloitte), the interactive DVD gift cards are slated to expedite the gift card evolution and cater to an ever increasing demand.